`A harlot's love, a harlot's lie'
Cast that ancient proverb by.
CALPURNIA's heart was cleaner far,
Roman matrons, than yours are.
Last year, the year of Nero's marriage, was marked by a world failure of crops that all but exhausted our granaries. This year, though the harbour of Ostia was now completed, a, strong northeast wind blowing for .weeks on end prevented the Egyptian and African corn fleets from making our shores. The. Italian harvest promised well, but was not yet ready to cut, and at one time there was only a fortnight's corn supply left in the public granaries, though I had done everything possible to fill them. I was obliged to reduce corn rations to the lowest possible level. Then, as though I was not doing and had not always done everything possible to keep my fellow citizens well fed (building the harbour, for instance, in the face of general discouragement, and organizing the daily supply of fresh vegetables), I suddenly found myself regarded as a public enemy. I was accused of purposely starving the City. The crowd groaned and howled at me almost whenever I showed myself in public, and once or twice pelted me with stones and mud and mouldy crusts. On one occasion I narrowly escaped serious injury in the Market Place: my yeomen were set upon by a mob of 200 or 300 persons and had their rods of office broken over their own backs. I only just managed to get safely into the Palace by a postern gate not far off, from which a small party of armed Guardsmen dashed out to my rescue. In the old days I would have taken this greatly to heart. Now I just smiled to myself. `Frogs,' I thought, `you are getting very frisky.'
Nero put on his manly-gown, in the year after his adoption by me. I allowed the Senate to vote him the privilege of becoming Consul at the age of twenty, so at sixteen he was Consul-Elect. I awarded him honorary triumphal dress and appointed him Leader of Cadets, as Augustus had appointed his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius. In the Latin holidays, too; when the Consuls and other magistrates were out of the City, I made him City Warden as Augustus had also done with his grandsons, to give them a' first taste of magistracy. It was customary to bring no important cases before the City Warden, but to wait for the return of the proper magistrates. Nero, however, managed a whole series of complicated cases which would have tested the judgement of the most experienced legal officers in the City, and gave remarkably shrewd decisions. This gained him popular admiration, but it was perfectly clear to me, as soon as I heard about it, that the whole affair had been stage-managed by Seneca. I do not mean that the cases were not genuine, but Seneca had reviewed them carefully before hand and arranged with the lawyers as to just what points they should bring out, in their speeches, and had then coached Nero in, his cross-examination of witnesses and his summing-up and judgement. Britannicus had not yet come of age. I kept him from the society of boys of his own age and rank as much as possible: he only met them under the eye of his tutors. I did not wish him to catch the Imperial infection to which I was purposely subjecting Nero. I let it go about that he, was an epileptic. Public flattery was all, concentrated now on Nero. Agrippinilla was delighted. She thought that I hated Britannicus for his mother's sake.
There was a big riot about the sale of bread. It was a quite unnecessary riot, though, and according to Narcissus, who loathed Agrippinilla (and found to his surprise that I encouraged him: in this), it was instigated by her. It happened when I was suffering from a chill, and Agrippinilla came to my room and suggested that I should issue an edict to reassure and quiet the populace, She wanted me to say that I was not seriously ill and that, even if my illness took a serious turn and I died, Nero was now capable of conducting public affairs under her guidance. I laughed in her face. `You are asking me to sign my own death warrant, my dear? Come on, then, give me the pen. I'll sign it. When's the funeral to be?'
'If you don't wish to sign it, don't, she said. `I'm not forcing you.' `Very well, then, I won't,' I said. 'I'll inquire into that bread riot and see who really started it.'
She walked angrily out. I called her back. `I was only joking. Of course I'll sign ! By the way, has Seneca taught Nero his funeral oration yet? Or not yet? I'd like to hear it first, if none of you mind.'
Vitellius died of a paralytic stroke. A senator who was either drunk or crazy, I can't say which, had suddenly accused him before the House of aiming at the monarchy. The charge appears to have been directed at Agrippinilla, but naturally no one dared to support it, much as Agrippinilla was, hated, so the accuser was himself outlawed. However, Vitellius took the matter to heart and the stroke followed soon after. I visitedhim as
he lay dying. He was unable to move a finger but talked quite good sense. I asked him the question that I had always meant to, ask: `Vitellius, in a better age you would have been one of the most virtuous men alive: how was it, then, that your upright nature acquired a sort of permanent stoop from playing the courtier?'
He said `It was inevitable under a monarchy, however benevolent the monarch. The old virtues disappear. Independence and frankness are at a discount. Complacent anticipation of the monarch's wishes is then the greatest of all virtues. One must either be a good monarch like yourself, or a good courtier like myself either an Emperor or an idiot.'
I said: 'You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?'
'Phaemon's dog was right.' That was the last thing he said before he lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered.
I could not be content until I had hunted down the reference in the library. It appears that Phaemon the philosopher had a little dog whom he had trained to go to the butcher every day and bring back a lump of meat in a basket. This virtuous creature, who would never dare to touch a scrap until Phaemon gave it permission, was one day set upon by a pack of mongrels who snatched the basket from its mouth and began to tear the meat to pieces and bolt it greedily down. Phaemon, watching from an upper window saw the dog deliberate for a moment just what to do. It was clearly no use trying to rescue the meat from the other dogs: they would kill it for its pains. So it rushed in among them and itself ate as much of the meat as it could get hold of. In fact, it ate more than any of the other dogs, because it was both braver and cleverer.
The Senate honoured Vitellius with a public funeral and statue in the Market Place. The inscription that is carved on it reads:
LUCIUS VITELLIUS, TWICE CONSUL, ONCE CENSOR. HE ALSO GOVERNED SYRIA. UNSWERVINGLY LOYAL TO HIS EMPEROR
I must tell about the Fucine Lake. I had lost all real interest in it by now, but one day Narcissus, who was in charge of the work, told me that the contractors reported that the channel was dug through the mountain at last: we had only to raise the sluice-gates and let the water rush out, and the whole lake would become dry land. Thirteen years, and 30,000 men constantly at work! `We'll celebrate this, Narcissus,' I said.
I arranged a sham sea-fight, but on a most magnificent scale. Julius Caesar had first introduced this sort of spectacle at Rome, exactly 100 years before. He dug a basin in Mars Field, which he flooded from the Tiber, and arranged for eight ships, called the Tyrian fleet, to engage eight more, called the Egyptian fleet. About 2,000 fighting men were used, exclusive of rowers. When I was eight years old Augustus gave a similar show in a permanent basin on the other side of the Tiber, measuring 1,200 feet by 1,800, with stone seats around it like an amphitheatre. There were twelve ships a side this time, called Athenians and Persians:. Three thousand men fought in them. My show on the Fucine Lake was going, to dwarf both spectacles. I didn't care about economy now. I was going to have a really magnificent show for once. 'Julius' and ‘Augustus's fleets had been composed of light craft only, but I gave orders for twenty-four proper war vessels of three banks of oars each to be constructed, and twenty-six smaller vessels; and I cleared the prisons of 1,900 able-bodied criminals to fight in them; under the command of famous professional sword-fighters. The, two fleets, each consisting of twenty-five vessels, were to be known, as the Rhodians and the Sicilians. The hills around the lake would make a fine natural amphitheatre; and though it was a very long way from Rome, I was sure that I could draw an audience there of at least 200,000 people. I advised them by an official circular to bring their own food with them in baskets. But 1,900 armed criminals are a dangerous force, to handle. I had to take the whole Guards Division out there and station some of them on shore and. the rest on rafts lashed together across the lake. The line of rafts was a semicircle which made a proper naval basin of the southwestern end of the lake, where it tapered to the point at which the channel had been cut. The whole lake would have been too big: it spread over 200 square miles. The Guards on the rafts had catapults and mangonels ready to sink any vessel that tried to ram the line and escape.